Way of the Samurai 4 Out on PSN Today

Last time on PS.Blog, my colleague Tom introduced you guys to our upcoming release (out today!), Way of the Samurai 4. He expounded on the back story, the sandbox nature of its gameplay, and a bit of the silliness you will encounter if you take up arms in Amihama. He tried to warn you. I’m just going to tell you. This game is crazy. Like, if you punch people, eggs fall out crazy.

Way of the Samurai 4 drops players into a period drama populated by Edo-era Japanese citizens, trade-hungry foreigners and hundreds of crates flaunting their breakability. As a masterless samurai, you’re free to aid whichever faction vying for dominance in Amihama that you like. You can choose to support the local government (the Shogunate forces), the isolationists movement (the Prajna), or the diminutive, sweets-obsessed diplomatic envoy from the British. Or you can do what I did and just run around killing everybody.

Whether or not you play by the rules is up to you. With ten endings and a ton of branching story potentials, I highly recommend just trying everything. Everything.

If you enjoy wanton destruction as much as I do, you’ll surely catch the attention of the lovely Kinugawa sisters, and get to enjoy one of three classic torture mini-games.Yes, you’re reading that right. I did, in fact, utter the highly unlikely word combination “torture mini-games.”

Quests will send you on trips to destroy pottery, dispose of peeping toms and crush the dreams of honest merchants. If you manage to get the language school up and running, you can engage in eloquent and highly intellectual discourse with the foreign settlers (please talk to the half-naked man on the Black Ship wearing naught but a pair of boxing gloves and striped underwear. He has one of my favorite lines in the game). And finally, you can attempt to romance the local and foreign ladies by selecting the correct pick-up line.

There’s also a ton of content to flesh out the silly bits. Here’s a quick rundown of some of Way of the Samurai 4’s features:

Customization – Weapons, appearance and fighting style can all be tailored to your exact liking. There are literally thousands of combos you can make with the weapons available (heck, you can wield a fish if that’s been an unfulfilled dream of yours), 150+ accessories to decorate your samurai with and the more endings you get, the more options you’ll get, like making your avatar a female. Or super-deformed. Or blue.

Night-Crawling – Navigate the torrid waters of love in Amihama and then meet your paramour for a night of revelation. If you can beat the other guy in the room trying to do the exact same thing (race of love?!).

Duelists – The game has a cool semi-online feature where other players’ samurais will be uploaded into your game as a computer controlled enemy for you to challenge and vice-versa. If you beat them, you get to claim their stuff.

Dojo – You can take over and run the local dojo in Amihama… and fill it by beating people up and forcing them to be your students.

Way of the Samurai 3 was $49.99 and keeping the digital nature of our release in mind we made WotS4 $39.99. It is a very full game, not a mini-download or anything, so I think you’ll find plenty of content for that price.

Awesome — I’ve really been looking forward to this being localized. Is there any chance of a physical release in the US, or is it going to be download only? I like to have a physical copy of things and would rather not import the Euro version if I can avoid it. Thanks!

Ahhhhhh! I want this game but I can’t as of now. I want to but I just can’t. Other than that, thank you very much for bringing it over to the U.S. I’m a big fan of the series. I’ll definitely get this copy myself when I can!

Looks like this game can be great fun and addictive and a unique experiences is exactly what every console needs.

I would pick it up if it was cheaper, $40 seems overpriced, I’ll wait until a price drop.

Why isn’t this game on PSVita as well? What are you guys doing? Make all games for both consoles with Cross Buy, Cross Play, etc and the exclusives each console has are games that can only be played on each respective console like Tearaway on PSVita for example.

Will this game come out on PSVita? If so, I assume it will support Cross Buy, Cross Play, etc. right?

It is. I highlighted the silly bits here, but there are several branching story lines that are not ridiculous or over the top. The game is as crazy as you make it. You can definitely just have a normal, classic samurai adventure without running about in your underpants. :)

This Genre is great and like you stated in your reply to #7 Deekman- Please, PLease let Sega and Sony know how much my friends and I in the North American PS3 Community want the Yakuza 1 & 2 HD remake to be made available on the PS store in November. My understanding is that its confirmed for the PS Store in Japan but not in NA. Pease help. Big fan of anything in the Yakuza series.
Thanks

I dont know where some people are coming from, 39.99 is a fantastic price for a full PS3 release from Japan. Legastia is a fantastic price at 29.99 for a full Japanese release on PSN // these are two different titles and shouldn’t be compared as the same. Also why must everything also be on Vita as well? I have a vita and sure I would love a few more games for it but every game that comes out shouldn’t also come out for Vita as well. If you need games to play there’s tons of backlog PSP games you can buy and transfer onto it for the time being.

Many thanks for the west release XSEED games.I have a question pls respond in anyway possible.Since I live in Turkey I have TR PSN account but the game has released for US PSN.Is this game ever gonna released for TR PSN too or not? I will also buy the physical copy that you will released for Europe but I dont want to wait till September/October.I have also mailed to XSEED game regarding it.Is there anything you can do about this?Sorry for my poor English and May Success be with you

Love it, just an hour into it and it’s really great. The production value is a little on the low side but really with a game like this I’m totally willing to overlook it. These kinds of games remind me of the heyday of the PS2 and all of the wonderful Japanese games we used to get… ohhhhhhhh do I miss those days…. thank you XSEED. I’ll prob import the EU disk version just to have a physical copy too.

Seeing all the excitement for this game has tipped the balance in its favor. I can’t pick this up right now, but it is now on my “need to purchase” list. Hopefully I can pick it up sometime in September before BL2 and One Piece: PW release.
Also, $40 for this is an amazing price. Warriors Orochi 3 was $50, and WotS4 looks to have tons more content. So definitely a lot of bang for your buck here. I look forward to getting a chance to play this. :)

First of all thank you for bringing it stateside. Ive been google searching “WOTS US release date” since last year. Ive been a fan of WOTS since I played the psp version & subsequently bought WOTS3 for my ps3. I only got to play the latter for two days but I couldn’t put it down. Almost didn’t finish my homework during spring break due to that game. Needless to say I experienced withdrawal, but Ill buy this sequel when I am able I assure you.

Our pleasure. We know digital-only releases aren’t appealing for some, but sometimes that’s the only viable way to bring it over, and we really appreciate you guys supporting it. It’s a full game, and I think you’ll get tons of play out of it. And as always, more support for the games we bring over means more games coming over, so cheers for that.

I did weild a fish once and took a frozen squid to the arm for my trouble so doing it in this game will be much safer I think. Thanks Jess and the rest of the XSEED crew for bringing this over! I will download it today but might not get around to playing it for a while because I am a busy guy.. (playing The Last Story obsessively).